Schmidheiny, who owned a string of asbestos concrete factories that have caused more than 2,000 deaths, was given his degree in 1996, four years after he sold his Swiss Eternit Group.

“In 2013, after a lengthy trial and appeal, Mr. Schmidheiny was sentenced to 18 years of prison for creating an environmental disaster which caused the deaths of well over 2,000 people — both workers and residents — in the town of Casale Monferrato, Italy,” the petition states. That conviction was overturned because the statute of limitations had passed.

“Around fifty Casale residents a year continue to contract mesothelioma, a cancer caused by asbestos exposure and almost always fatal within a few years. Therefore, prosecutors in Turin have filed murder charges against Mr. Schmidheiny,” which are not covered by a statute of limitation, the petition said. An Italian court will decide by early June whether those charges will go to trial.

In 2014, the mayors of 35 Italian towns asked that the Swiss billionaire’s honorary degree be revoked. A previous petition by Yale alumni had asked that Yale revoke Schmidheiny’s doctorate of humane letters.

Cosby, who received his honorary doctorate in 2003, has been accused by more than 50 women of sexual assault or sexual misconduct and has had honorary degrees revoked by some of at least 60 universities that have granted him the honor, according to the New York Times. Others have refused to do so.

Daniel Berman, lead author of the petition, said Schmidheiny, 68, is trying to reinvent himself as an environmentalist. “He’s using Yale to buttress his reputation.

“I just thought this was an outrage and I’m an activist and I always have been,” said Berman, a 1964 Yale graduate. He said he visited one of Schmidheiny’s cement factories in South America and that Schmidheiny should have known of the dangers of asbestos. Long used as a fire retardant, its fibers cause asbestosis and mesothelioma, a highly aggressive cancer.

Christopher Meisenkothen, a New Haven lawyer who represents mesothelioma victims, said the petition was the outgrowth of a seminar held in February at Yale Law School, at which he was a panelist. “I think the timing is opportune,” he said. “This has been going on with Schmidheiny for a few years now so it’s been overlapping with other issues that Yale has been grappling with.” He referred to the Yale Corporation’s decision not to rename Calhoun College, named for avowed racist John C. Calhoun.

“Yale needs to have some sort of mechanism for re-evaluating these things,” Meisenkothen said. “It’s not a defensible position for Yale to say, ‘Under no circumstances will we revoke an honorary degree.’ All they’ve been doing is saying Yale has never done it.

“These are serious cases. These are not crank issues,” he said.

Barry Castleman, an environmental consultant from Maryland who was an expert witness in Schmidheiny’s 2010 trial, said the businessman declared his Italian operations bankrupt in 1986, locked the gates and walked away. He said the company had held training sessions on how to deal with questions about asbestos exposure.

“I think it’s really shocking that Yale’s been protecting this guy all this time,” he said.

A spokesman for Yale did not immediately reply to a request for comment.